Shepherd Ville Review by Zevri

Play OMG has a new Facebook game out called Shepherd Ville, now the name may sound
familiar to some console and handheld gamers for a reason; it is based off of
the game Shepherd's Crossing, which is a farming simulator in the same light as
Harvest Moon, but with a more casual approach to it. This was my first time even
hearing that there was a browser based game based off of that franchise, never
mind it being one that was a Facebook game. Being that I am a fan of those types
of games, this was something I was looking a bit forward to.

The character creation is the first thing you do in most any game, and this
is no exception. The creation process is fairly basic but does serve its job.
You're able to pick out what gender you wish to be, and you're able to pick out
some basic hair, skin, and cloths options. These options don't seem permanent,
since there are options to change your cloths and hair in game if you have the
items to do it. So it does give hint to having the ability to customize you look
more later on in the game, which is fairly good.

Starting out in the game, I met a familiar looking character named Bramy,
which is an odd talking duck carrying a wine bottle on his back. He serves, as
his predecessors did in the other games, as a sort of guide on the ins and outs
of the game and teaching you the basics to get you started with your farm. The
complexity of that is very low like the standard games, learning the basics of
what you need to know goes by fairly quick and even rewards you a bit for your
trouble to help you get along in the game a little faster.

From what I have played, some of the basics from the original games are
there, but it is limited to what you can do on the farm. First off the
farm area is rather small, which doesn't give you a lot of room to openly plant
all over. It also removes elements that the other games had such as random
interaction from the town folk or being able to go into your house. The
game has pretty much been stripped to its bare by just having a limited farming
element where you can grow crops and take care of livestock, which consists of
just laying down food near them and being done with it till you're ready to sell
them for profit. The game also still feels like a single player, even retaining
a "Save Game" button for you to save progress when you want to, which if you
don't use, you won't be able to save your current progress at with. Which to be
honest feels really odd in an online game, and seemed like a weird feature for
them to add, I didn't really see the point of it, except for people to "roll
back" to an earlier time when they felt like they made too many mistakes that
day.

While the game is rather stripped in terms of features from its console born
brothers, it does try to incorporate some social features as well to try to make
it feel more like an online game. One of the main features of that is the
ability to visit your friend's farms and even gift them items if you wanted to
help them out. But even when you visit, the game lacks any sort of chat or
mailing system to give you the ability to interact with that person without
needing to use the Facebook IM chat. The game even has a basic quest based
system in the game which has a simple complete x task and get a reward, though
to be honest the rewards seemed rather small and thus didn't really get my
attention enough to really get into them, they seemed just like a grab at
attention for people to keep interested in the game.

Another thing they added to try to get people's attention is an actual
progression/leveling system. Using this you can progressively level up your farm
by selling whatever you can to reach certain "experience" points in the game for
a level. When you level you unlock more features and things you can buy. For
instance there is a hunting mini game in the game but it takes quite a few
levels to get the dog you need for it, and it seems even more to get the gun you
need to actually do it even once. You also unlock more animals you can raise and
items you can decorate your farm with, so leveling is something you want to do
to see what you can unlock, but the way the game progresses feels fairly slow
paced and seems to take too long to get to some of the other features in the
game, like hunting.

Though I loved the console games, I am not too sure how I feel on this
browser rendition of the game. It is appealing in a sense, but it just feels
like a stripped down version of the actual game, taking away some of the
features that made it good, and trying to make it into another "Farmville" a
basic game that doesn't meet the standards of normal games. It has potential,
but they need to add more content to the game to bring it up to the standards of
the franchise.

Self Introduction From Author:

Zevri

I have been playing mmos since about 1999, and haven't stopped since, and I
cannot even remember when I started console/pc gaming. I'm an avid gamer who
does dive back into the real world from time to time. My all time goal is to
start my own business, but that is taking a side step as I am going through
college.